The honesty and sincerity of his speech exercised the younger Pliny, the author of the earliest surviving Latin panegyric from the imperial period. A passage from early in his Panegyricus shows this concern:
Non enim est periculum ne, cum loquar de humanitate, exprobrari sibi superbiam credat; cum de frugalitate, luxuriam; cum de clementia, crudelitatem; cum de liberalitate, avaritiam; cum de benignitate, livorem; cum de continentia, libidinem; cum de labore, inertiam; cum de fortitudine, timorem. (Pliny, Panegyricus 3.4)
There is no danger that when I speak of his humanity he will think arrogance is being criticized; that when I speak of his frugality, he will think extravagance, of his forgiveness, cruelty; of his generosity, greed; of his kindness, jealousy; of his restraint, lust; of his industriousness, laziness; of his bravery, fear.
When elaborated at such length, the question of why Pliny would worry about a skeptical interpretation of his sincerity demands attention (see also Pan. 2.1-2, 53.6, 68.7). In part, his claim for the transparency of his speech functions as a comparison with the false oratory under Domitian (Bartsch 1994: 148-66). Pliny is explicit about the value of comparison in a speech of praise (Pan. 53.1), and much of the commendation of Trajan in the Panegyricus is given salt by denigration of the demonized emperor, only four years dead in 100 ce (S. Braund 1998: 64-5; Rees 2001: 152).
Secondly, in this assertion of his own sincerity, Pliny was perhaps attempting to head off suspicion associated with the whole genre of thanksgiving (gratiarum actio) as panegyric. His speech was given in thanks for the suffect consulship. No earlier speeches of this type survive, but it seems to have been regular procedure from the time of Augustus onward (Ov. Pont. 4.4.35-9; Nixon and Rodgers 1994: 3). Pliny confirms this in his letters: the delivery of such a speech of thanks for the consulship before the senate was customary (Ep. 3.18.1); but the content of such speeches was nota, vulgata, dicta (‘‘well-known, understood, and said before,’’ 3.13.2); as such, it tended to bore its audience (3.18.6). And although Quintilian, whose lectures Pliny attended (6.6.3), does not specifically advise on how to give praise to the emperor in thanks for the consulship, it may well be that the customary consular gratiarum actio
Carefully adapted recommendations of treatises such as his on panegyric (Inst. 3.7.1018; cf. Russell 1998: 28). The codification of good practice might limit initiative and further add to the reality or perception of the genre’s formulaic nature. Pliny’s speech, together with the two letters which serve as commentary on it (Ep. 3.13, 3.18), show how ingrained panegyric had become in Roman society by the late first century ce. According to Pliny’s observations, there is less a suggestion that panegyric was generically suspect than that its practitioners were uninspired or corrupt at the time. By admitting and confronting these problems, Pliny hoped to assert the honesty and sincerity of his own speech (Levene 1997: 103). At the same time, in a brilliant ruse, Pliny attributes the sincerity of his own praise to Trajan’s insistence on freedom of speech (Morford 1992: 584-93). Confession and confrontation do not prove honesty, but they do at least provide some resistance to any potential counterclaims. (See chapter 24 for an opposing view.)
Like Cicero’s Caesarian speeches, the Panegyricus dates to early in its regime, and was perhaps intended to exert political influence (S. Braund 1998: 65-8). The speech is colossal (Radice 1968). The text is not that delivered before Trajan on September 1, but a revised form, considerably expanded. This elaboration was deemed by Pliny convenientissimum (‘‘most appropriate,’’ Ep. 3.18.1) for a loyal citizen. His stated ambition was twofold: to commend in Trajan, with true praise, his own qualities, and to record for future emperors Trajan’s example of the road to glory (3.18.2). But it is not clear that Trajan had access to the revised version of the speech, and it is hardly likely that he or any later emperors read through its ninety-five chapters. Nor should we consider it chance that this expanded and embellished panegyric is the first such imperial work to survive. Pliny was very pleased with his speech and clearly took pains himself to ensure that others would have the opportunity to read it.
In his two letters about the speech, Pliny is most pleased with its style (Gamberini 1983: 337-448). He writes approvingly of its ordo, transitus, and figurae (‘‘arrangement, transitions, and figures of speech,’’ Ep. 3.13.3); of how a speech ought to raise and lower its tone (3.13.4); and of how it was composed in a laetioris stili (‘‘happier style,’’ 3.18.10). Stylistic ornamentation is conspicuous in the passage quoted above: the repeated and pared structure of cum de followed by ablative and accusative abstract nouns; each phrase articulating an antithesis, but with an alert ear for the sounds and rhythms of clause length, variable chiastic arrangement of declensions, even fleeting alliteration and assonance; and overall the sentence’s carefully wrought cadence modulates the contrapuntal ethical terms. The rhetorical device of epigrammatic antithesis features frequently in the speech and mirrors at a stylistic level the structural principle of comparison between Trajan and earlier emperors (Rees 2001). Modern readers tire of the speech (Fedeli 1989), but it was to prove influential in late antiquity, the floruit of Latin panegyric.
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